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2nd World Conference on Music and Censorship
Copenhagen, Denmark, September 28-29 2002
More than 100 musicians, musicologists, producers, journalists
and human rights defenders from 25 countries worldwide convened in Copenhagen
on the last weekend of September in order to lecture, discuss, present cases
and hear personal testimonies concerning the state of music censorship in
2002.
A South African protest singer and the police spy assigned to stop his career
met face to face in a panel discussion, a famous Afghan musician from Kabul
told his personal story on how he was forced to work as a butcher under the
Taliban regime
The 2nd World Conference on Music and Censorship examined the above cases,
as well as personal testimonies from a Palestinian cultural worker, a controversial
Israeli/Palestinian singer, a censor from Nigeria, and other musicians, journalists
and scholars from Sudan, Cuba, Israel, Malaysia, and USA.
A total of 30 speakers from 20 different countries spoke at the conference,
which also focused on the many aspects and effects of music censorship worldwide.
Among the themes were censorship by corporative, governmental and religious
bodies, media and music industry concentration, nationalism/protectionism,
and limits of musical freedom caused by the September 11 attacks and other
political events.
Thematically, the conference moved in various directions: the historic testimony
in the South-Africa panel, the consequences of war and conflict leading to
almost total absence of technical infrastructure (the Middle-East) and the
more or less sophisticated examples of recent censorship, ranging from Turkey
through the even more hardliner-regimes of Afghanistan and North Korea.
The latter country includes two officially state appointed pop groups who,
throughout their "careers" have released a total of more than 100 CDs, the
only pop-CDs available in the country. In Turkey, self-censorship still
hinders Kurdish music and cultural expression in spite of the fact that Turkish
authorities recently lifted their ban. Recently a trial was announced against
11 women in a folk music ensemble performing a 60-year-old Kurdish song at
a cultural festival in Diyarbakir. But, in spite of this, things are
slowly getting better. Only a few decades ago certain instruments like
the "oud" were forbidden, and government appointed committees "chose" the
music you were supposed to hear and approved bands and ensembles. Needless
to say, only those that played pure, Turkish music were allowed and
all foreign, ethnic expressions were banned.
On the telephone from Jerusalem, Rania Elias, director of Yabous Productions
- a non-profit Palestinian organization set up in 1995 in order to organize
festivals and concerts and promote Palestinian groups and artists within
the performing arts, excused herself explaining that this was the 13th international
conference she had to turn down so far this year. She is not allowed
to travel. The situation for Yabous is getting increasingly difficult.
One aspect is the Israeli occupation which «deprives us of our ability
to move and work freely» as well as the bombing of Palestinian TV and
radio stations. But even if they could move around freely - the Israeli
have imposed a six o`clock curfew - people are afraid to move around during
nighttime. Also, the economic situation being the way it is, musical
events are not among people`s main priorities. The consequences are,
that in several cities such as Ramallah, public concerts are simply not being
organized.
And then there is the political aspect. Whereas writers in the Middle
East, at least in secrecy, keep in contact, there are no musical relations
between Palestinian and Israeli musicians. At one of the last festivals
that was arranged in the area, musicians from Egypt and Palestine refused
to attend if Israeli musicians were invited. The festival organizers
chose to comply with the demands of the Arabs and so the reactions from the
Israeli side were unanimous («You`re a bunch of nazis»). The
Arab music world on the other hand, would also evidently welcome a total
cultural boycott of Israel.
A session called "limits of free expression" gave examples of Mexican and
Italian authorities trying to come to grips with "underground" music gone
popular: The Mexican corridos associated with the drug-business and Italian
songs associated with the Mafia. The music, as was demonstrated at
the conference, was sweet, almost folkishly naive, but the lyrics were another
story altogether, brutal, violent and gloryfying the bussiness. Both
authorities and artists, however, seem slightly ambivalent. Said one
corrido bandleader after Mexican authorities had banned their song critizising
president Fox: «I would have banned it too if I were the president.»
The Afghanistan session was a mixed experience. While bringing together
musicians in exile and Afghan musicians who had stayed home during the Taliban
regime, the panel was top-heavy with representatives of the latter group
who all seemed to condone the new regime and the presence of the international
society. Be that as it may, their reluctance to answer questions relating
to the total lack of women in music and media as well as the ethnic diversity
of the country, left this listener with the impression that the music scene
in the new Afghanistan may not be as free as we were being told.
But the situation under Taliban was pure horror in comparison. Whereas
music has always been an important part of Islam and censorship rules have
been muddy, the only form of musical expression allowed during Taliban was
unaccompanied chanting. Musical instruments were forbidden and destroyed,
musicians got their fingers and even hands cut off and there were no public
performances at all. Still today, there`s a lack of musical infrastructure
to meet with the growing demands of the Afghan people; poor distribution,
few media outlets, no education and almost no venues.
If the Afghanistan panel was confusing, the session on South Africa was both
interesting and touching. It was the story of a South African protest
singer and the security branch policeman assigned to end his career.
The whole story was also told in the 54-minutes film «Stopping the
Music» which got a special screening outside the conference.
Roger Lucey is a white, South African protest singer who dared to challenge
the injustice of the apartheid system through his songs. He encouraged
his colleagues and his audience to «stop singing Bob Dylan texts and
start singing about our own reality.» When he became very popular
the security police intervened. The film, which was shot in post-apartheid
South Africa, as well as the panel during the conference, focused on the
relationship between Lucey and the policeman assigned to stop him, Paul Erasmus.
They each described and explained their experiences of the dirty tricks campaign
waged against Lucey. Having individually explored their past during
the shooting of the film, they agreed to meet each other for the first time
on camera in the very hotel where Erasmus used to celebrate his successful
campaigns, including some of those against Lucey.
The film and the panel was ultimately a story of reconciliation in a country
once torn apart by severe racial and ideological conflicts and offered a
moving insight into the cathartic process of facing up to one`s past.
But the session was not without humorous aspects. Music producer and
publisher David Marks explained that political consciousness was very low,
both among white South Africans and among visiting artists. Some of
the artists playing the famous «Sun City» resort in the seventies
and eighties did not even understand that they were actually in South Africa.
As for the South Africans themselves, Marks illustrated his point by telling
the following story:
Once upon a time in the 1970ies, Boney M, the popular black soul-pop-disco
group of that era, visited South Africa. They did not at all like what
they witnessed. Some time after, they attended the MIDEM festival in
Cannes, the record industry`s annual get-together. At MIDEM they ran
into a white, female South African record producer and started questioning
and almost harassing her about the political situation in her country.
The producer, obviously baffled by the hostility of the musicians, gave the
best answers she could. But this was not doing it for Boney M, and
at a certain point one of the musicians screamed: «But when are you
guys going to release Nelson Mandela?» Whereupon the producer,
evidently slightly confused, replied: «Yes, well - what label is he
on?»
Paul Erasmus «turned» in the late eighties. He himself
became a security risk and was persecuted by his own colleagues. In
his opinion, this was part of the white regime`s strategy in their negotiations
with the ANC - they needed to give the impression that they were serious.
Whatever aspect you choose - the South African reconciliation process is
something to be studied by other countries as well as ethnic and political
groups in and areas of war and conflict.
There were other sessions equally interesting, if not that moving.
During "The Logic Behind Music Censorship", the "logic" of conservative interpretations
of music in Islam was explained by Jonas Otterbeck of the University of Malmø,
Sweden, as the "fear of music as a competing source for passion and pleasure."
Music, according to Islamic hard-liners, is useless. Instead of giving
praise to Allah and learning about Islam, musicians engage in useless and
sometimes harmful activities. And this, then, becomes the crucial issue:
The presumed power of the music. Music is seen as a competitor for
the passion of humans. That is the "logic" behind the hard-liners attitude
and, consequently, music censorship in parts of the Islamic world.
During a session on Cuba, a Cuban anthropologist now reciding in USA, tried
to "explain" censorship as part of a deeper logic which had nothing to do
with censorship imposed by authorities. She was paired in the panel
with Gorki Luis Aguila Carrasco, a musician from the band "Porno para Ricardo",
one of Cubas most censored groups. In spite of the fact that their
band-posters are red with the good old hammer and sickle, their CDs contain
warnings and in reviews and newpaper articles journalists change the band-name
in order not to provoke readers and authorities. They simply go too
far. But this is Cuba today, seemingly more tolerant, but according
to Carrasco they fool you. The communist party tries to influence young
musicians, censorship is heavy and, in short, "everything is being monitored."
Nobody speaks their own opinions in public, there are rules for all public
expressions and performances and, last but not least, everybody should abide
by the "fact" that "the Cuban government takes care of your happiness."
So, where is the deeper logic?
There were still other sessions, discussions and speakers, but this is what
I was able to cover. The program was packed with an impressive list
of speakers and important themes, enough to fill more than the two days that
the conference lasted. So, the next time around, we may very well spend
a full week in Copenhagen. Sadly enough, music censorship will not
go away, at least not in our time.
A complete report from the conference will be available in February 2003.
Meanwhile, check out the organisation Freemuse at www.freemuse.org.
Carl Morten Iversen
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